Canada Post

WikiProject Canada Post is a project which aims to add as many post offices in Canada as can be found to OpenStreetMap.

Canada Post's own database yields just over 6000 post offices within the country, and the Overpass API has been used to determine that just over 2000 of those, or only about one in every three such outlets, have already been added to OSM's database. A national and provincial/territorial breakdown is linked here.

To participate, first refer to these spreadsheets linked below, which detail which post offices have already been added to OSM and which have not. If you are near a post office which is not yet included in OSM's database, the preferred method to add the post office is via ground survey, however local knowledge is also suitable.

• Atlantic (Postal codes starting with A, B, C, and E)
• Quebec (G, H, J)
• Ontario (K, L, M, N, P)
• Western and Northern (R, S, T, V, X, Y)

Also, you can use these Overpass API queries to gauge the progress of this WikiProject. The data they produce is a bit unwieldy, so try to run these queries at less busy times, and give them the time they need to be fully processed.

• Atlantic
• Quebec
• Ontario
• Prairies, NWT and Nunavut
• British Columbia and Yukon

Anyone is permitted to add a comment to these spreadsheets, and adding a comment is recommended if you add a post office to the OSM data, so the spreadsheets can be updated accordingly. To protect the integrity of the spreadsheet data, only the spreadsheets' creator, User:DENelson83, is able to directly edit the spreadsheets.

Each spreadsheet has a "master list" of post offices, and each of those entries has been colour-coded according to their disposition:

     Included: The post office is in OpenStreetMap.      Missing: The post office is not in OpenStreetMap.      Found on waymarking.com: The post office's location can be looked up on waymarking.com in the "Canada Post offices" category, and this data may be used to guide a ground survey. It is not known if waymarking.com data is licence-compatible with OpenStreetMap, so do not directly copy from there.      Moved: The location or street address does not match Canada Post's records, and will need to be re-verified.      Postal code correction: The postal code tagged in the OSM database does not match the postal code in Canada Post's records. The correct postal codes can be found in the above spreadsheets, with a bolded postal code indicating that postal code has been correctly tagged, at the correct post office. Postal codes for Canada Post facilities always end with a zero.      Letter sent: A letter has been sent to the postmaster of this post office asking for its exact location. This can be a way of getting location data from post offices that are difficult to physically access.      Parent business included: The post office is a franchise, located within another business. The post office itself is missing from OpenStreetMap, but the business it is located in is in the OSM database.

Each spreadsheet also has a second sheet titled "extraneous data", detailing which post offices found in the OSM data have been determined to have closed; which OSM post office data is redundant and needs to be merged, i.e., if a single post office location has both a way and a disconnected node describing it, in which case the tags from the node should be moved to the way; and which locations have been erroneously tagged as post offices. Only locations branded as Canada Post where postage stamps can be purchased should have the "amenity=post_office" tag, while outlets branded as "FedEx", "UPS", or any other private courier should instead be tagged as "office=logistics".

A harmonized tagging schema for Canada Post outlets should also be adopted, consisting as follows:

• addr:housenumber (Use ground survey or local knowledge wherever and whenever possible)
• addr:postcode (Use from spreadsheets, or if conducting ground survey, ask a post office employee for the outlet's postal code)
• addr:street (Use ground survey or local knowledge wherever and whenever possible)
• amenity=post_office
• brand=Canada Post
• brand:wikipedia=en:Canada Post
• brand:wikidata=Q1032001
• building=yes (If tagging a way)
• name (Use name on sign in front of post office, or if no name is visible, use name from spreadsheets)
• opening_hours (Optional, but recommended)
• operator (Either "Canada Post", for an outlet run directly by Canada Post or located in a private residence, or for an independently-run franchise, the name of the business that the postal outlet can be found in)
• phone (Optional)
• wheelchair (Optional)

It is preferred that no two or more post office locations share a postal code. If this is not the case, only the outlet listed in the above spreadsheets should get tagged with "addr:postcode", while the others not use the "addr:postcode" tag at all. As well, no two post office locations within the same province or territory should be permitted to have identical name values. The above spreadsheets do not use the same name for any two post offices within a given province or territory.

If you have local knowledge of a yet-to-be-added post office, and wish to contribute its location, here's how:

1. Using a Windows PC, go online to Bing Maps, and zoom the map into that location.
2. Switch the map to "Aerial" mode.
3. Locate the building that contains the post office in question, through panning and further zooming in the map if necessary.
4. Right-click on the building's position in the aerial imagery.
5. You should see a menu pop up, with a pair of numbers and the word "Copy" below it. Click on the word "Copy".
6. Look up the post office in question in the above-linked spreadsheets. Its entry should be coloured red.
7. Finally, paste the copied coordinates into a comment next to that post office's entry.